YouTube: Google’s Mindfield
YouTube is a wonderful thing for its content generators, viewers, and most especially founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Kareem with their billion dollar payday. Every web-savvy user knows that if you’re looking for a specific video, more than likely, YouTube has it. If I miss something on TV, I don’t stress it because I can always search YouTube for it the next day. It is the hot spot for video on the web and it is also the new Napster.
When Google acquired YouTube, I knew the old media companies would launch the first of several lawsuits for copyright violations. While YouTube was a threat, they were not making any money. Other than shutting YouTube down, the old media companies had nothing to gain from going after the site. Of course, everything changed once Google announced they had purchased YouTube for 1.65 billion in Google stock. I just don’t think Google fully realized the copyright infringement minefield they were stepping into with the acquisition of YouTube.
Everyone knows about Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit against Google over copyright violations at YouTube, and I’m sure no one who uses the site was surprised. There was no way content dictators holders would allow YouTube to become the web portal for their copyrighted material with Google at the helm. Many are viewing Viacom as Web 2.0’s Metallica in their attempt to force YouTube to remove their copyrighted content and pay them for copyright violations. In principle, I do understand Viacom’s issue when it comes to copyrighted content. If I put millions of dollars into TV shows, I would want a say in how that content is being used. I speak from personal experience because I have created content only to have it stolen by someone online. I look at the amount of time and creativity I put into that work only to have someone use a five finger discount to obtain my work. That being said, I see Viacom’s issue when it comes to copyright violations.
On the other hand, Viacom as well as other old media companies, were slow to jump on the online video train, and it (YouTube) took off without them. Since old media companies did not build their own video portal for their own content, YouTube users did it for them. If Viacom were smart, they would work out a deal with YouTube to keep their content on the site and distribute future content through YouTube. The site does help TV shows find a new audience, which surely boosts TV ratings. To me, it’s promotion Viacom does not have to pay for; I would think free promotion is a good thing. Unfortunately, the suits at Viacom don’t agree and are thinking about the “damage” to their content and TV brands.
Google, in my opinion, has a mess on their hands with YouTube. There are thousands of videos on the site that contain copyrighted content. Unlike Napster, these videos are hosted on YouTube servers, not the user’s hard drive. This is the main difference between YouTube and Napster. While Napster didn’t have billions of dollars in the bank and an army of lawyers to fight their battle, they lost, and I foresee the same end result with Google. Unless Google can settle this and other pending/future lawsuits, you should enjoy YouTube while it lasts.
